Is Recovery Mode a safe environment??

[white7561]

Is the recovery mode in macOS secure? as in if i open Recovery mode and then go to safari and say open my Password Manager Vault there (on other people's Mac on emergency). Is the history/Cookies etc recoverable? or is it safe ?

Also is the terminal's history kept between sessions or just wiped completely after i exit the recovery environment??

Thanks !!!

 

[Weaselboy]

Totally safe for that. Recovery basically runs in memory as a virtual machine and everything (history etc) is gone when you shut it down.

 

[white7561]

Totally safe for that. Recovery basically runs in memory as a virtual machine and everything (history etc) is gone when you shut it down.

Yeah that's what I thought. But was just making sure you know.

My plan was to format a USB to APFS Encrypted, and put my password manager 2FA recovery key there. Then put it on a safe box on a bank. In case of worst case scenario where everything I have is gone because of house fire or something else that I hope would never happen.

APFS encrypted should be fine right? My plan was if I need to log in to my password manager on a new phone for example, i can just borrow some of my friend's MacBook maybe. Go to recovery since it's safe and even if there are malware or viruses. It's probably not gonna infect the recovery partition. Then mount the USB disk and just use terminal to read the text file containing the 2fa recovery code.

 

[Weaselboy]

Yeah... that would work just fine.

Another maybe more flexible option would be to use Disk Utility to make a small encrypted disk image. Then you could store that small image wherever you want, like the USB key you mentioned or even email it to yourself and save it online that way (like with outlook.com or icloud.com).

I have a small disk image with my Keychain exported passwords saved like that and I keep it in multiple locations, both online and local disks.

 

[white7561]

Yeah... that would work just fine.

Another maybe more flexible option would be to use Disk Utility to make a small encrypted disk image. Then you could store that small image wherever you want, like the USB key you mentioned or even email it to yourself and save it online that way (like with outlook.com or icloud.com).

I have a small disk image with my Keychain exported passwords saved like that and I keep it in multiple locations, both online and local disks.

Yeah that's the thing right. I have an encrypted img with 2fa recovery codes inside my external SSD. But the thing is, this USB is supposed to be for worst worst worst case scenario. Where I lost all my things you know. My phone, laptop, yubikey, external SSD etc. And since I'm gonna need to log in to my password manager. I only have my master password without any 2fa authenticator to authenticate me. That's why I'm thinking a USB is good. I was thinking of like uploading it to a personal cloud. But like Im gonna need to log in to there too to access it. And since it's password is randomized well that's gonna be hard

Other way is to upload it and set the encrypted DMG as public link. But again you probably can't remember the link without it being shortened.

A dilemma for sure